Handmade Sweets

Some of the most eye-catching photos floating around social media these days include non-edible items made edible. People are fascinated by the ability to turn a regular item into cake! As a cake decorator, it is so fabulously satisfying to have someone say, “I can’t believe that is cake!”

However, when I hear comments such as these, it is usually regarding the smoothness of my fondant or the sharpness of my buttercream edges, as opposed to the realistic quality of my decorations or design. Admittedly, I am a round cake kind of girl. I love a gorgeous round cake with straight sides and sharp edges… tier after tier of traditionally beautiful cakes make me swoon.

But I have to admit… lately I’ve been eyeing the amazing designs of realistic and novelty cakes and wishing I could steal a little bit of that talent!

So… since I’m not the type of person to stay where I am and never move forward, I decided to step a little bit out of my comfort zone for my daughter’s third birthday cake this year. While I think traditionally classic cakes will always be my true love, I did enjoy a bit of carving, shaping and imitating real objects on this one!

My daughter LOVES to color, so we went with a coloring theme! I decided to try to create a coloring book cake!

As I started to create, I got that familiar tingle of excitement and took the idea further, deciding to create a cake that she could actually color on. I found some fabulous printable coloring sheets created by SamanthaBDesign on Etsy and printed them with my edible printer.

And then I became even more ambitious and chose to create the crayon box out of cake as well!

As I was staring at the finished cake at 10:30 p.m. at night (because that’s how my own kids’ cakes always go), I knew that there was no possibility of me being satisfied with this cake if I did not create a couple of edible crayons to embellish the final product.

And then I knew I was done! I loved it! It did not come easy… me carving cake is nothing like those awesome videos you see on YouTube… more like a disaster of cake and frosting and the occasional sweat and tears. But when I finished my design, I was pretty pleased!

The best part was bringing my baby girl to her cake while her daddy covered her eyes, and then seeing her looking around confused and wondering where her cake was! She didn’t realize the coloring set in front of her was her cake! Once we pointed it out to her, she immediately tried to pick up one of the edible crayons to color!

In case you’re wondering, she did color her cake at the party (with edible markers). She loved every minute of it, even coloring so long that part of the cake started to get smooshed!

She wasn’t even sad when we cut into it, because… well… she loves cake. <3

While I could definitely get lost in a good stationary store, that is not what this post is about.

I really wanted to talk about the edible kind… frosting sheets! Wafer paper! Because the two make me just as giddy as (if not more than!) a brand new pad of pretty note paper.

Let’s be honest… when you think of edible images, you think of something like this…

Source: http://order.cakes.com

(Which is great! And also how grocery stores are able to charge what they do.)

In my time as a cake designer, I have really evolved in my thinking toward edible images and edible ink printers. I have graduated from feeling slightly embarrassed about owning an edible printer (feeling like maybe I am “cheating”) to loving every minute of it and always looking for opportunities to use it.

Why?

Because I have begun seen far beyond the colorful happy birthday sheet cake image, the simple Super Why image and the edible photo of the birthday child. I have seen the endless possibilities and the stunning details to be created using printed images and patterns!

Here is where it all began…

This was one of my first cake orders, and it was a little terrifying! My customer wanted a Brad Paisley guitar cake. I mean, paisley!?!?

But then I had an idea… and did a little online searching before running across the street to our grocery store to have them print this glorious paisley image. And the wow! People were even more impressed than I thought they would be!

So I began to dabble more…

And started to use images and printed patterns to enhance smaller details on my cakes.

Even going so far as to use printed wafer paper to decoupage, as in the top tier of my July 4th cake!

I literally found an old copy of the Declaration of Independence, printed it on wafer paper and stuck pieces of it all over my cake… and that tier is one of my proudest.

It wasn’t until my polka dot cake that I finally let go of my inner struggles with using this simple medium.

One of the cake designers that I admire most shared this cake to her page, and I couldn’t help but notice a comment on the post. Another cake decorator said something along the lines of “Well, it doesn’t look very difficult – just printed paper on a cake”. Which is true, and it was what I had been afraid of people thinking when she had first shared it… and her comment left me staring at my computer screen in confusion and embarrassment.

But then the wonderful cake designer replied to the comment. I don’t remember her exact words, but she basically responded that of course it was printed, but that it didn’t matter… and that a person knowing how to use their creativity, tools and resources to create something beautiful that makes people happy is a great talent in itself.

You cannot imagine what this did for me as a cake designer! I felt that I had been freed from everything that held me back from being proud of my cakes. No more secretly wondering if I had much talent beyond my tools. I was able to acknowledge the creativity and talent that it took to come up with an idea, seek out the tools and successfully create the cake. And I felt free to just have fun.

And now I happily seek out opportunities to add these unique touches to my cakes!

I am thrilled to have so many different mediums available to me, and I revel in the time spent discovering new ways to use them.

I could eat, sleep and breath cakes these days, and one of my very favorite aspects is the amazing and fun themes that my clients bring to me! From vintage rose first birthdays to sharks & strawberries (my adorable nephew’s choice) to pinwheels.

This week I was so thrilled to create a “Two Wild” themed cake! My incredibly fun returning customer wanted a jungle-themed cake using animal prints and black lace of some sort. She wanted it to be a bit more sophisticated than childish. This criteria was both incredibly fun and exciting, and also a little nerve-wracking! Animal prints can definitely be misused!

In continuing with my mission to discover my own style, I chose not to search online for examples (and to peek at the examples she sent me with squinty eyes). As I often do, I laid down on my back, closed my eyes and drew a picture in my head.

I still felt a bit unsure of the picture I had in my head, so I sketched it out just to make sure it was balanced.

Thank goodness I can decorate a cake better than I can sketch, {and this particular sketch was done in haste and not meant to be seen} because the cake turned out much to my satisfaction!

I used edible lace throughout this buttercream cake {I will link to the lace and mat below}, as well as wafer paper, fondant, edible glitter AND icing sheets.

In order to respect my customer’s wishes for a buttercream cake, I chose to apply the fondant decorations in a way that would be easy to remove – note on the bottom tier {in the photo above} that the fondant is attached loosely, separated from the cake by the lace and only attached at the base.

Lastly, McGreevy Cakes‘ wafer paper pom tutorial got me started on my wafer paper fan flowers, although I had to find my own way once I realized her amazing tutorial would not look so great with my one-sided printed paper.